I'm sad to announce that I will be retiring as a Minecraft texture pack maker (for now) and will not be producing anymore updates for Isabella.

I owe a huge dept of gratitude to everyone who downloaded my pack, especially those who took the time get in touch with me via this post or PM. Isabella has been my most successful creative endeavor, and even though I never made a dime doing it, the hours spent were well worth it.

I'm leaving Isabella in the hands of the community. I'd love to see someone (or some people) take her to 1.6 and beyond. Anyone wishing to continue my work has my permission to do so.

Treat her well.

Thanks,
-Bone

Isabella II is a reworked version of Isabella (now called Isabella Classic.) It offers the same melancholic feel but with brighter visuals, improving the experience on a wider range of monitors.

Isabella was designed to make use of custom animated water and lava, Connected Texture Mod (CTM), RandoMob, and Custom Colors. I also recommend enabling Better Grass and playing with a view distance of Normal or lower. To get these features, you must install:

Textures by Bonemouse
Main Menu Background by frejid
Some textures are based off the work of Mojang
Note: Some textures from Quandary and Coterie Craft appear in Isabella. These textures were originally created by Bonemouse for those packs.

Font used in this post is Pea Robyn from Fonts for Pea
Some screenshots were taken on a private server that wishes to remain nameless. Thanks!

The following served as inspiration for various elements of this pack.

Wow, this is awesome! EditCraft is the only texture pack I've been able to stand so far (default with glass/cobble/etc. fixes) but your pack is something I can actually see myself using. Thanks for this!

Wow, this is awesome! EditCraft is the only texture pack I've been able to stand so far (default with glass/cobble/etc. fixes) but your pack is something I can actually see myself using. Thanks for this!

Thanks, I appreciate that!

Quote from jdwarfer »

Hmmm I was curious because of the name...
This pack looks very good so far, keep working on it ! :smile.gif:

The darkness is a tricky issue and something I'm sure I'll be tweaking for a long time. It's meant to be dark but it shouldn't be unplayably dark. And it's definitely not a pack people should use in their YouTube Let's Plays.

Well, I can certainly say you've achieved the effect you were going for. Also, I sincerely disagree with the "too dark for let's play videos" thing. I've got a test video rendering right now, which I'll post here once it's done.

I may be wrong about the outcome, but either way, this is easily my favourite pack at the moment.

Edit: Video up! Consider it a bit of a demo of this pack too, actually.

So, a new version is up. The most important change is I've added a moon and sun texture. These are slightly, slightly bigger then the default textures to give them a little bit of oomph. They are also still square.

Also refined the sheep and squid textures. I'm planning on supporting the Randomob mod and the last thing I wanted to do was make a ton of variations based on textures I wasn't satisfied with.

And finally, I did lighten some textures a little. People who found this pack to be too dark will, I'm afraid, find it too dark still. This is mostly to help differentiate block types in the inventory screen and on the action bar. It also makes underground a little less oppressively dark. Just a little.

I really like the textures. Pumpkin is great, furnace, quite everything. It's just too dark to play with that pack a long time.
But I can just lighten it up a little to match my taste, if you don't mind :smile.gif:
Anyway it's a very good pack IMO.

I was sad to realize that I would no longer be able to use the Quandary texture pack, and has therefor been rolling around with the standard texture pack (though with Wild Grass and BetterER Grass, to make it a bit more interesting). This, really made my day.

I would love to see both custom water and lava/magma, as well as a custom break animation. The 'old' one simply doesn't suit the beauty of this pack.
Sadly, I won't be installing this, since it seems to be lacking Wild Grass support - which is a huge lack for me, since I've really become almost dependent on Wild Grass. As soon as that minor problem has been fixed, I will start rollin' with this park.

Oh, and I think it'd be awesome to see some custom art (if it's not already in the pack) - the bottle, and your avatar, seems amazing, and if you made that, it'd be awesome to see it in the pack.
If you already made custom art, what'a'bout some screens of it?

Again, amazing job. (I will probably continue to post more and more things about this, since it's absolutely amazing..).

But I can just lighten it up a little to match my taste, if you don't mind :smile.gif:
Anyway it's a very good pack IMO.

Thanks. And I don't mind at all. In fact, I'd like suggest that you post your results if you do it. I think, others might find it useful. And at the very least, I'd be interested in seeing the changes.

Quote from SevV »

THAT PUMPKIN!! :biggrin.gif:!
its Amazing!

Thanks!

Quote from mrisump »

--snip--

First of all, thank you kindly!

I did do a custom break animation, actually. I didn't stray far from the original, though, and it could probably do with an overhaul. I'm not too sure when I will get around to it.

Currently, on my high priority list is to do the pine sapling, birch sapling, rain and snow for 1.5 next week. And I'm really, really hoping to have custom water before then.

WildGrass is also on my todo list. I really like what he's been doing lately with the new flowers and vines and such.

Nope, no custom art yet. You've got me thinking though. My avatar the default character skin for this pack. And the bottle is the pack's icon which also hints at the overarching narrative I came up for this pack. The art would be a really fun way to explore this more.

You where a sailor riding in the "S.S. Leopard", and your wife, Isabella, was back home. Her touch, so gentle, it is the only thing you have left when you started the voyage. However, even good things come to an end. You were called to go sail on the 'S.S. Leopard" and of course, you had to go on it. Isabella's words, "Oh please, come back safely!" were sewn into your mind when you went aboard the ship, but even Isabella's words might not ensure safe travel. It was a fine evening, but gloomy and muddy clouds began settling in. Then, it started. Lightning hit the ship exactly at it's mast, and it caught fire. Strangely, everyone but you died. The last thing you remember was being swept by winds into the murky waters, but you landed in a strange land, unknown to you and all of the world. All you see was debris and blood. Blood and bodies, oh the horrid bodies... You collected a bottle and a piece of parchment, and you found a pen. You began to write a note.

Also, can you change the clay? It's practically impossible to find it since it's so similar to sand.

"Oh my dearest Isabella, I have grave news... My ship, the S.S. Leopard, has sunk, and I am now in a foreign land. I long for you, and I hope I may return soon. If you find this, remember that I will always love you.

You placed the note in a bottle, and with that, you placed it in the sands. You eventually saw it getting swept by the tides, and you saw it merrily float away. With that, you were alone, left to fend for yourself.

I hope you like it! :biggrin.gif:

I very much love the gloomy, dark feel this texturepack has. The Nether seems to be a dull, hopeless place. Full of danger, yet no excitement.

I find this Texture Pack ing amaaazzzzzziiiiiinnnnngggg!! :biggrin.gif:
There is room for a little improvement (sorry to repeat this) like lighting it up a bit.
The furnace, the pumpkins, the Wolfs! All amazing! In fact practically everything is.

@MetroFan180
Loved the story! And pretty darn close to what I had in my head.
As for the clay, I'll take that into consideration. I wanted the clay to blend in a little better then Quandary but I may have gone too far.

@Shock
Thanks. I actually had retextured the MineGunner mod to fit with Quandary and since I'm using Quandary items (for now) it would have fit perfectly into this texture pack. Unfortunately my computer decided to die on me last week and these were one of the many textures I lost in the process.

@Butterstone
Thanks. I'm still trying to figure out how to approach the darkness issue. I'm going to up the saturation a little across the board and also lighten the leaf and grass textures and see how that looks. If there are any particular textures people feel are too dark, it would be helpful for me to know.

Things I have been working on recently:
I'm redoing the clouds. I had considered taking them out completely because of the new weather system. But I personally rely on the clouds to find north*. Plus the lightning effect looks terribly cool when there are clouds. So they are in, but with a lot less coverage.

Custom water animation is hard and I haven't made much progress. I opted to rework the water from Coterie Craft (which itself is reworked from Painterly) to get the colours right. I may release this for the time being if I can't get my own working before 1.5.

Also, new rain, snow, birch and pine saplings (mentioned before) as well as booster tracks.

*If you place redstone on the ground (to make a '+' pattern) you may notice that each branch has two gaps in them except for one. This odd one out always points north.